Ibrahim Nasrallah

إبراهيم نصر الله

Born: Amman, Jordan

Domain: Literature & Poetry

Recognition: GLOBAL

Biography

Ibrahim Nasrallah is a major Palestinian poet and novelist, born in 1954 in the Wahdat refugee camp in Amman to parents expelled from the village of al-Bureij in 1948. Raised in the conditions of exile that mark so much of Palestinian literature, he became one of the most prolific and ambitious novelists of his generation, devoting decades to a vast cycle of historical fiction. He is best known for his "Palestinian Comedy" (al-Malhah al-Filastiniyya), an interlinked series of novels spanning roughly 250 years of Palestinian history, of which the most celebrated is "Time of White Horses," a sweeping multigenerational epic shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The cycle constitutes one of the most sustained literary attempts to narrate the modern Palestinian experience from the late Ottoman period through dispossession and after. In 2018 Nasrallah won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the "Arabic Booker") for "The Second War of the Dog," a dystopian novel about moral collapse and the commodification of violence. He has also published numerous poetry collections, and his work moves fluidly between lyric verse and historical narrative, earning him a reputation as one of the Arab world's most versatile writers. Before devoting himself fully to literature he worked as a teacher in Saudi Arabia and as a journalist and cultural administrator in Amman. His books have been translated into English, Italian, Danish, Turkish, and other languages, and several have been adapted for stage and screen. Nasrallah's lifelong project of converting Palestinian memory into durable narrative form, combined with the highest pan-Arab literary recognition, places him firmly among the leading custodians of the contemporary Palestinian story.

Why This Person Matters

Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2018), his decades-long novel cycle is one of the most ambitious literary narrations of Palestinian history ever attempted.